Withers are spawned by placing soul sand in a T shape (as shown in the image to the left), and putting 3 wither skeleton skulls on top of the three upper blocks. The last block placed must be one of the three wither skeleton skulls, and can be placed by the player or a dispenser. Air blocks are required on either side of the base soul sand block under the upper blocks. The building pattern can be configured upright, sideways, or upside-down; the skulls can also have any orientation.

Like other hostile mobs, the wither despawns when the difficulty is changed to Peaceful. The wither spawning structure will also fail in Peaceful difficulty: the blocks will simply do nothing.

The wither drops 1 nether star upon death which, until picked up, won't despawn or be destroyed by explosions. The Looting enchantment will not increase this drop. It also drops 50 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

This undead triple-headed creature will then immediately attempt to destroy every living thing in the vicinity, spitting out skulls from each of its three heads and inflicting a creeping corruption on their target which turns a player’s hearts an unhealthy black. In its fury, the Wither will destroy blocks it comes into contact with - even if you survive the battle, there’s often precious little left standing nearby.

When spawned, the wither will grow larger in size as its health bar fills up. While in this state, the wither is invulnerable, and will not move or attack. When this state ends (after 10 seconds), the wither will create a very large explosion centered on itself, destroying nearby blocks and damaging nearby mobs/players. This explosion is accompanied by a loud, threatening sound that is not centered on the wither, but rather it can be heard equally from across the map. After this, the wither will attack nearby mobs and is now able to take damage.

The wither is immune to fire, lava and drowning damage. Suffocation is ineffective, since upon taking damage, the wither will break any block that comes into contact with it (except bedrock, end gateway blocks, end portal blocks, end portal frames, command blocks, barriers and piston extensions). Like other undead mobs, the wither is harmed by healing potions and healed by harming potions; however it is unaffected by any other status effect.

The wither is hostile to the player and all mobs except the following mobs:

The wither is unaffected by all attacks from undead mobs except other withers' skulls. They can see players/mobs under the Invisibility potion effect.

If the wither is calm, it simply hovers and is unable to gain altitude. On Normal or Hard, it will also randomly fire blue skulls in random directions until it finds a target.

The wither has a dark purple boss health bar which is only shown when a player is looking in its direction, including through walls. When looking at the wither, the sky gets slightly darker. All withers will display a boss bar on the screen.

Upon noticing a mob, the Wither hovers above it and rapidly shoots projectiles called “Wither skulls”. Each head fires independently, allowing a wither to attack up to three different mobs/players at the same time. The main head controls the Wither's movement, and has a 0.1% chance to shoot a blue wither skull instead of the default black one.

The wither has a passive regeneration rate of 1 () every 20 ticks (1 second), and a direct hit on a target instantly heals 5 ().

When its health drops below half (150 ( × 75)), the wither will gain the "wither armor" effect, which makes it immune to arrows and causes it to only fly at the same height as its target. The armor will disappear if it regenerates above half health.

Upon noticing a mob or player, the wither will fly to a random location and hover in place. It will shoot 3 black wither skulls and a blue wither skull before flying to another location.

At half health, it causes a large explosion that spawns 3-4 wither skeletons (except on Easy difficulty), as well as gaining "wither armor". Instead of flying to a random location, it will now dash towards its target like a missile, destroying most blocks and damaging mobs in its path. It also has different birth and death animations, both of which involve the wither spinning and exploding.

The wither shoots wither skulls, which look like extra heads of itself launched as projectiles. If a wither skull hits a mob/player on Normal or Hard difficulty, it inflicts 40 seconds of Wither II effect (which drains their health and turns their hearts black).

There are two types of wither skulls: a fast moving black one, and a slow moving blue one. Black wither skulls explode with a blast radius of 1, the same as a Ghast's fireball, and cannot break blocks with a blast resistance above 20. The blue wither skull has the same explosion strength, but moves slower and treats most blocks as having a blast resistance of no more than 4, making it more destructive to the terrain.

The wither was introduced into the game, but it does not spawn naturally. Left unfinished by Jeb and hidden in the code, it was discovered through the presence of its skin in the /mobs/ folder. Withers could only be spawned with edited monster spawners, mods, or hacks, and could crash the JVM.

The wither does not take damage from undead mobs' attacks or from drowning.

If the wither is damaged by the Void, it will frantically attempt to fire blue skulls.

If the wither is after a blaze and the blaze tries to fly up to it, the wither will attempt to keep rising above the blaze, thus making both of them rise higher until they hit a ceiling or until the blaze despawns.

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